rider21

I know it's hard to get into. 43% chance into vet school, even students with 4.0's get turned down, so why should I give it a shot?

I'm passionate. I love medical, I am patient, do well under pressure, and work well with horses.

I'm a high school senior with a bad transcript. I have a full-IB schedule (I've taken biology, pre cal, chemistry), but my junior year I slipped. I had depression, worked 25 hours a week, my house was foreclosed, grandma got breast cancer, parents nearly divorced.. It was a tough year and it showed. I had a terrible teacher as well. My GPA was 3.2 from my junior year, 3.6 freshman year, and 3.5 sophomore year.

My first SAT score was 1650, hopefully within the next two it will raise to 1850.

I have been riding horses for 5 years, have 120+ volunteer hours at a horse barn and a hospital, as well as miscellaneous other places. I am president of my ER team at school, consecutively placing 2nd at state the past two years. I am an executive mentor in my leadership program for the past 2 years.

I am afraid colleges will judge me for my junior year, as it was the most important. But truth is that it is a bad representation of how I am as a student. Do you think that I could be a candidate for veterinary school eventually, or should I already start to choose a different path?

Also, anyone know about Colorado State vs. Washington State? Or any other fantastic pre-vet college that would be appropriate to my statistics if I choose pre-vet?

Thank you so much!!

vetstu2016

If you are passionate about it, you should definitely give pre-vet a try. I'm a first year in vet school now and there is nowhere else I'd rather be. Honestly, grades aren't everything and aside from getting into the particular undergraduate college you want, for veterinary school your high school grades won't really matter. I did not do so hot on a few of my classes in undergrad (made about 3 or 4 C's I think) but on the GRE I made a 760 on math, 600 on verbal, and 5 on writing (that was the old GRE) so I feel that makes up for my relatively average GPA. It sounds like so far you have a great start on experience, maybe work on shadowing/working at a small animal clinic as well so you can get some small animal experience in as well. Just be smart about which classes you are taking in undergrad with regards to what vet school you have your eye on (they all have different prereqs) so you don't realize at the end of undergrad that there are courses you are missing. Certain undergrad schools can make this easier or harder. The school I went to is atypical for students wanting to go to vet school so I ended up having to take prereqs like animal nutrition and animal science by correspondance because they weren't offered (or even accepted as elective credit) by my undergrad school. Vet school is NOT impossible, don't let any statistics freak you out, but you do have to work hard in undergrad and get as much hands on animal experience as you can. In the long run you'll be glad you did because vet school itself is pretty tough.